


City of Destiny

by allegheny



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: 2019 MiLB Season, 29-Year-Old Rookies, Angst, Baseball Mysticism, M/M, Minor League Baseball, Sacramento River Cats - Freeform, San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners, Tacoma Rainiers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:17:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21750910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allegheny/pseuds/allegheny
Summary: I could walk out, but I won’tI wish someone would take my placeCan’t face heaven all heavenfacedAustin and Mike are two career minor leaguers in a strange land. Homesick for the East Coast, overshadowed by family, jaded with the cruel world of association baseball, they meet on a crisp early April afternoon at Raley Park. Nobody's looking, nobody cares, and it's just as well.——No, no, hear me out, it's good I swear, read the fic
Relationships: Austin Nola/Mike Yastrzemski
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	City of Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> Aaron Nola's older brother, Austin, made his major league debut at 29 for the Mariners last year. So did Mike Yastrzemski, Yaz's grandson, for the Giants, at 28. I love old rookies and random pairings. This is set before they both get their callup. give it a chance plz

Well the first time Austin sees Mike Sacramento is too open and too yellow, the air too dry, the river too green.  
He's tired and the season hasn't even started so by September he'll be exhausted or dead. He takes his five thousand five hundred swings and thinks about yesterday sitting in his shitty new apartment crushed by Mount Rainier watching a TV show thinking of five thousand five hundred reasons to give up and run away and stop trying.  
Then he sees Mike. 

When you've been hanging out in the sewers of association baseball for enough time you start finding small spots of rust on your clothing, orange stains that don't wash away. It happens to everybody who rots away long enough in the laundry fields of the minor leagues, sickly blotches marring your home whites, eating away at you like mange.  
It’s a chickenpox of infamy, the mark of the career minor leaguer, the mark of failure, the mark of "this and two part-time jobs", of never home and away so much home isn't home at all anymore. 

When the rust first appeared Austin was 26 and he thought it was his brand new catching gear rubbing off, and maybe it had been. He'd scrubbed away at it all night but the next day he wore his shame out in New Orleans for all to see.  
And nobody noticed, because nobody was watching, and nobody cared. 

This isn't talking matters. You keep quiet when it touches you. You let it dig its hole in your chest; let it poison you slowly. But you learn to see others like you, learn to see the invisible plague where others don't take a second look. In silence, you accept each other's new horror.

Austin's seen many ways others have tried to fill the hole.  
Marriage. Kids. Cleat-chasers. Alcohol. Japan, Korea, Australia.  
Well, Austin's gimmick became falling into bed with other guys. 

It all started innocently enough, with one too many drinks and some random dude, one night he was upset, and afterwards he thought maybe standing in the shower til the water burned his skin would wash off all the sin and all the dirt from him.  
It didn't.  
The rot in his chest festered inside instead and suddenly he was 27 and sleeping with top prospects, viciously hoping in the rough and tumble that all his rust would rub off on them, only to check their clothes the following morning and find nothing but immaculate white. 

In church Austin always feels just on the verge of bursting into flames and the holy water scalds like that shower did that night. He chokes on the eucharist and lies in the confession booth like he wants to change but never does. Father don’t forgive me I’m not worth it.  
He’s the devil in disguise, all filled with lust and envy and sodomy, burning soot marks on wooden pews.  
But despite the pull of flesh and jealousy he still goes, because what else does he have?  
Is it temptation if it becomes you? 

So here he is, Sacramento, one more lifer of almost 30, no callup, no position, a jack of all trades with a solid track record of fucking the farm hoping for every future major league starter he shoves facedown against hotel room pillows to lend him just a little bit of their magic or to go down with him at least. 

He’s Crash and Annie all wrapped up into one scruffy dude, except he can’t tie knots and hasn’t seen the majors. 

And Mike. 

Yastrzemski. The grandson.  
Austin stares at him as he leans on the dugout railing.  
When he signed with Seattle and finally escaped the grip of Greenlee and Denbo he thought for a second the rust might wash off for his new start. But his Rainiers uniform stained when he tried it on.  
Of course, he’d never given up. The minor-league measles aren’t a death sentence: they twist you up inside but they don’t touch baseball. Sure, you’re a bad family man or alone in Asia or a sex addict now, but baseball— baseball doesn’t change. Something drives you through the jadedness and exhaustion to learn catcher, to follow your coach to Arizona, to fight like a cornered animal for just the hope of receding the advance of the cold dark pit in your stomach even as the powers that be sabotage you like cruel Greek gods.  
But at the end of the day you look around you, and you’ve become the wrong kind of vet despite yourself. 

Mike’s River Cats uniform has the stains and sure, Austin’s been with guys like himself before, but he doesn’t like being on the bottom, and they never do either because they look for a proof they’re still men anywhere they can find it so it’s a fight for dominance and he’s always too frail to win.  
Mike doesn’t seem like a guy who’d care too much for that, with his heaven-faced cherubic looks. 

It’s funny how they immediately lock eyes and Austin can tell they’re both strangers in a strange land and how he’s not surprised to find Mike waiting for him on the parking lot after the game like they actually have ever met before. 

“Austin, right?” He holds out his hand.

Austin shakes it, his shower-damp hair making him shiver in the cool dry air of late-spring Sacramento. He gives him the look. The “we’re two career minor leaguers and nobody's watching us, because nobody cares what we do or don't do” look. 

“I’m Mike.”

He's got stubble on his upper lip and green eyes too big for his face. Austin watches him looking at his beard, his cauliflower ears, his hooded eyelids.  
He seems satisfied by his assessment. 

"You wanna grab a drink?"

Sacramento is a gay man's paradise and Mike's car is a shitty old burgundy truck he drove all the way from Arizona with all the shit he used to carry between Bowie and Norfolk.

"They traded me like two weeks ago so I had to drive from Florida to Scottsdale." He mutters as they head into the city center. 

"You like it here?" Austin asks as he watches the evening urban landscape drift by.

Mike shrugs. 

"It's a place. Maybe here I'll get a chance, at least."

Austin thinks of the big league team, the Mariners' hot start, Ichiro's retirement. 

"Yeah. I can relate to that."

The Mercantile Saloon is a gay bar that doesn't look like one, which Austin is thankful for. They get in through an nondescript blue door, sink into a pair of dark wooden chairs at a table, and order drinks. He used to be scared of places like this until he realized nobody was watching him because nobody cared. 

"So." Mike says over his double rum and coke. "What's your story, big guy?"

Austin almost scoffs into his whiskey because he's just barely pushing 6 feet and plateauing under 200 pounds, but Mike _is_ smaller than him. 

"Um." he's not sure what Mike wants but what the hell, when else does he get to tell the truth, because he feels as if he can tell the truth, sitting here in a gay dive in Sacramento talking to another guy who wakes up with the taste of metal in his mouth every morning. "I'm from Louisiana. I played for LSU. I got drafted in the 5th round by the Marlins and afterwards I don't really know what happened. Things just stopped working out, you know."

Mike takes a sip. 

"As they do."

"Yeah." The truth stays stuck in his throat and he's furious about it in the way he's always furious about everything somewhere deep inside of him. "You?"

"Played for Vandy. Orioles drafted me and I've kinda been rotting away in Delmarva since then."

Silence. Austin really likes the fact that they were both locked in the purgatory dungeon basements of the manure heap teams of baseball. Marlins and Orioles. That makes him smile. 

"There's still snow up in Tacoma, that blows my mind." he comments. 

"Snow, or the fact it's still there?"

"Both. Yeah."

"You like snow?"

"Yeah. It’s different. Like, we never got snow where I grew up... or where I played...”

He’d arrived in Tacoma after they broke camp. The first thing he’d seen in the distance was Mount Rainier, huge, eating away at the sky, getting unfathomably larger every second as he drove his car up I-5.  
He’d stopped on the side of the road and got out, stared up at the giant ahead of him, and felt so small, so unimportant, dwarfed by nature, that all his concerns seemed suddenly futile and stupid and unimportant and he’d felt like he could really start over, here by the Bay of Commencement. Like God had to have dropped him here in the City of Destiny for a reason, that it was all a sign, a second chance crowned by the whitecap of a volcano. 

And then the rust had bled all over his clothes again and here he is in Sacramento, making small talk before he inevitably ends up in Mike's bed, so so much for that. 

"Your brother's not doing so hot, huh?" Mike suddenly says, dragging the elephant in the room out on the table.

Austin isn't too surprised because he wears his sin on his sleeve and Mike isn't the first one to conjure from the set of his eyebrows or some look in his eyes that he's got a younger brother miles more successful than him. 

"Yeah. It's the new balls."

"You ever get jealous? Ever get happy when he's struggling?"

It's blunt but expected, because tonight is for the truth and they left their secrets at the door with their half-worn masks. And Austin wants to say he doesn't, but that would be a lie.  
He's full of green-faced envy, full of hate and spite, boiling over with undeserved rage more and more every year that goes by.  
Because Austin was always willing to have a catch but all his dad wanted to see was a reluctant Aaron throwing with that magical arm motion that seemed to take so much effort but so little work. And Austin slaved away trying to get better, but it didn't matter because Aaron had so much talent and Austin was just a guy who loved baseball.  
And it was so unfair. It was so unfair he'd get jealous when their dad would yell at Aaron in front of everyone, because he wanted to be believed in that hard, he wanted to be so precious he was worth the effort.  
But he never had been.

"Yeah. Yeah, actually." He lets out, and a part of him thought he would feel free by admitting the terrible truth like you do after confessing for real but all he feels is the darkness inside of him shivering. 

And he doesn't know how he became this angry bitter man, this guy who can’t be happy for his sweet, awkward, earnest little brother, his terrified, desperately gay little brother. 

What the hell is wrong with him?

"I'd be the same." Mike nods before downing the rest of his drink. “But I’m an only child.”

"Yeah? What's it like to be Yaz's grandson?" Austin segues as Mike swallows the last of the alcohol. "They call you Yaz?"

Mike puts down the glass.

“Yeah. Sometimes.” 

“They call your dad Yaz?”

“When he was alive, they did.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool.”

“Did he play?”

Mike smiles flatly and his eyes lock with Austin’s for a brief moment like he’s hit the sore spot right on. 

“Career minor leaguer.” 

“You’re your father’s son.”

Mike laughs the kind of sad laugh guys like them all have, insincere and acidic and raw.

“He quit at 27. Married man, you know. He wanted kids.”

Austin looks at Mike and Mike looks at Austin, two single guys thousands of miles away from home stalling themselves before they both take each other’s clothes off.  
Maybe Mike isn’t his father’s son, or maybe he is, maybe his father had the rust and maybe that’s why he quit but Austin won’t ask because you don’t mention the rust.

“The thing is,” Mike says, leaning back on his chair, “Guys like you and me, we don’t have natural talent. We gotta work twice as hard at everything we get. My dad was that way, too. He grinded and grinded for just one chance at how good my grandad was, and he knew he’d never get there. It’s like you’re running against a clock you can’t physically beat.”

Austin stares down at what’s left of his beer blankly. One thing he’s noticed is the stains on the sleeves and necks of their uniform confer them abilities none of them question. Sure you’re poisoned like a rat, but you see things clearer also, so clear you can almost read minds. And Mike can read his.

“I guess that your case is both better and worse, because Aaron’s a pitcher and you’re a hitter so it’s hard to compare... but you’re older so it hurts so much more.”

Austin has nothing to answer to that. Around them the bar keeps going but they’re frozen there like statues in their chairs, pillars of salt petrified by their true nature. 

“Okay, let’s go.” Austin finally says, standing up. 

“Yeah, let’s move.” Mike agrees.

The drive to Mike’s is lined with blockish buildings from the 1960’s that remind Austin of home and the occasional mission-style saloon that reminds him that it’s not. They told him Sacramento was a flood plain, and for a brief moment he sees himself, bare feet in muddy waters three years ago, feeling the dirt and disease leech up into his veins and letting it. 

He doesn't look at Mike's apartment. He shoves him against the wall and pins his wrists up, and they kiss and growl and Mike is firm but doesn't buck. It's good to be with a guy who knows what he's doing but isn't trying to throw Austin off and mount him. Austin's had enough of grunting underneath a bigger guy who won't even jack him off. He pushes Mike onto the bed, and lets the coal-black pit in his stomach catch fire.  
Mike is good, plain, robust, assertive... communicative. Austin hopes the neighbors don't mind. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirrored door of Mike's wardrobe, rocking his hips into Mike, pants bunched up around one of his ankles, already-slick hair sticking to his tired bearded face, and he looks away.  
It almost turns him off. 

He falls asleep so easily after coming, and it's for the best because he's pretty sure he'd have a crisis every time if he didn't, Catholic panic seizing him at his most vulnerable, so there's just enough time to remove the condom before he dozes off. 

He wakes up in the early morning to Mike's snoring.

Slowly he gets out of bed, careful not to disturb him, and heads to the bathroom.  
The apartment is a lot like his back in Tacoma: almost completely empty, pre-furnished, PS4 on the floor next to the TV, undecorated walls, an open suitcase on the couch. There's a framed picture of four generations of Yastrzemskis on the coffee table. The fridge is a desert save from a stick of butter, some beer, and a bottle of ketchup. A tub of Old Bay sits unopened on the counter, and at least Austin can find a little comfort in the fact his own sad impersonal apartment has a spice rack.  
He stands there until he gets depressed and wanders back to the bedroom. Mike's lean figure heaves slowly with his sleeping breath, the crumpled sheets wrapped around him. Austin finds fallen hair from his head on the other pillow. Their clothes lie scattered on the floor; when Austin checks them, they're all freckled with red-orange. 

Things don't change. 

He picks up his clothes and goes on his way, leaving a note for Mike to tell him he'll see him tomorrow. It doesn't really matter what comes after, doesn't matter that they hook up the five following days and he leaves Sacramento with Mike's number and a team that's starting the season one and four. It doesn't really matter because nobody will ever know but them. Because nobody's watching, and nobody cares.

On their first day off three weeks later, Austin drives up to Mount Rainier National Park, all the way to Mowich Lake.  
He leaves his car behind and climbs. Up and beyond the trails, deep into the forest til he sees snow.

He thinks of the saying about the tree falling and the sound and whether it exists, and he thinks about himself and Mike and the minors and the insignificance of his own condition before God and the mountain and the world.  
The uncaring God, the uncaring mountain, the uncaring world that won't see him.  
And he wonders if this is all real, if the immaculate snow really does stain with rust around him when he kneels down to pray there on the slope of the volcano, if the spots are even really there on his clothes or if unreality just happens if you stay in the shadows long enough. 

"Show me." He whispers. 

And the Cascades are too open and too blue, the air too cold, the bay too deep. 

And here, off the beaten path, away from everything, if he yells, nobody will hear him at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do leave a comment if you liked it!! thanks for reading!


End file.
